Help formatting new HD

[bulwer]

When I try to format my HD (New Maxtor 120 GB 8mb) through XP I get an error message after it finishes saying that it was unable to format the drive and that it may be damaged. This is a brand new system with an abit NF7-S mobo. I tried to format an older 10 gb HD and got the same problem. BIOS recognizes the drive accurately. What else can I do? Is it the drive or the mobo? The cable? Thanks.

 

[leon_the_pro]

it can be any of
mobo
cable
drive
xp itself

 

[Teq]

Quicky checklist:

1) Are your cables ATA100, 80 wire, cables?
2) Are they in good shape?
3) Is your power connection to the drive plugged in all the way?
4) Is the 120gb drive recognized correctly in Bios?
5) Are you formatting in NTFS through the XP disk manager?
6) Is the disk partitioned correctly?
7) Are the Drive jumper set correctly (Master/Slave not CS)

The new IDE cables are fragile things, you can damage them simply by pulling them off a drive... new cables with new drives is always a good idea.

Maxtor power connectors are notoriously stiff... make sure it's pushed all the way in.

Maxtor drives will work on Cable Select... but they seem to like the older Master/Slave method better.

If all these things are Ok... grab the diagnostics off Maxtor's website and give them a run. See if the drive passes all the tests. If it doesn't, well that's what warrantees are for...






---><font color=green>It ain't better if it don't work</font color=green><---

 

[david__t]

I would go for a Win98 boot disk and a DOS format every time - especially since WinXP will not let you format to FAT32 on a new drive unless it already has a FAT32 partition on it. Use FDisk + Format and take WinXP out of the equation.

4.77MHz to 4.0GHz in 10 years. Imagine the space year 2020

 

[bulwer]

And how exactly do I use fdisk + format? Can I still install XP?

 

[Teq]

My god, why would you want to us FAT32 when NTFS is faster, more stable and has built in security and file compression?



---><font color=green>It ain't better if it don't work</font color=green><---

 

[Teq]

You will be a LOT further ahead using the partitioning and formatting tools built right into the XP installer. Just partition the drive as you want it, format with ntfs and go for it.

Fat32 is a leftover from windows 98... and it never was a very good FS in the first place.


---><font color=green>It ain't better if it don't work</font color=green><---

 

[bulwer]

Well, the whole problem is that I get an error message after doing a NTFS partition saying that XP was unable to format the drive and it might be damaged. I just tried again with a new cable and got the same result. I can get to the windows installation screen if I do a quick NTFS format but it still crashes a couple minutes into the installation. Ive tried to format an older drive that works and have the same problem. What else can I do? I am using a DELL XP pro installation disk...do they have some kind of security device?

 

[namek0]

The only reason I'm still using FAT32 is that I'm the only computer on my home network that has XP, and I'm constantly swapping files around

It's all good ^_^

 

[Teq]

Ummm... file systems don't matter when you're transferring stuff over a network.



---><font color=green>It ain't better if it don't work</font color=green><---

 

[Teq]

Ok, two possibilities...

1) If you are getting the same result on 2 different hard disks, it's most likely your motherboard. If it's new, get it replaced under warranty.

2) Dell may have done something to that CD... see if you can get a factory copy, or at least one that's burned from a MS factory copy.



---><font color=green>It ain't better if it don't work</font color=green><---

 

[namek0]

So if an XP computer has NTFS, and a 2000 has fat32, the 2000 computer can read stuff off of the XP computer?

I'm just going by what I heard a long time ago, if I'm wrong that'll be great

It's all good ^_^

 

[Teq]

Yep, sure can... file systems are local. The filesystem is not transferred over the network just the file contents. At the sending end a file is encoded from the local filesystem into network packets. At the receiving end it is decoded from network packets into the local file system. Any filesystem can talk to any other file system through a network.

The internet is nothing but a big network... some servers are on EXT32 (linux) some are ntfs (winnt) some are Ftt32 (win) likely some are on proprietary systems... but it all works together. No Problem.


---><font color=green>It ain't better if it don't work</font color=green><--- <P ID="edit"><FONT SIZE=-1><EM>Edited by teq on 05/10/03 06:56 PM.</EM></FONT></P>

 

[wigwam]

i had a similar problem with the same drive formatting/installing with xp pro on an asus a7n8x
it told me there was a problem with the format [it didnt do 8mb for some reason] yet i could select the "117000mb" partition to install to and the rest went fine.
only puzzle then was that winxp/sisoft recognise my 120gb hdd as 144gb?!

i also went thru the above stuff and used the powermax utility - it is useless and crap!

i have emailed maxtor with the error and the issue and if they reply i will try to post it on.